skydeck

Google Latitude and Yahoo FireEagle

Posted by Jason on Mar 10, 2009 in Apps We Like, Mobile Market  |  Comments  |  Share 

At Skydeck we’ve been playing around with Google Latitude, the new feature of Google Maps for mobile phones that allows you to share your location with friends.

The Latitude idea has been floating around for years, but … it’s very hard to do well on one model of cell phone; there are actually hundreds of different kinds; there is no obvious revenue model; cell phone and Internet companies cannot agree on how to split the non-obvious revenue; and privacy advocates think the whole idea is insane. Google has cut through all of this by ignoring revenue for now, spending a fortune to build clients for many different kinds of phones as well as systems that can figure out the location of those phones without the help of cell phone companies, and promising to do no evil.

It works really well. If you connect to me, I can see where you are at all times. No more “I’m here – where are you?” phone calls. At a sprawling conference in Barcelona, the Skydeck team were able to keep track of each other and co-ordinate meetings. And my wife knows when I am on my way home. (more…)

Navizon: location-finding for your iPhone

Posted by Jason on Sep 19, 2007 in Apps We Like  |  Comments  |  Share 

Navizon has released a version of its location-finding app for the iPhone (via Gizmodo).

Navizon has a folksonomic approach to location-finding. A small number of users with true GPS devices run software in the background that builds up a database of locations for WiFi hotspots and cell towers. Every user with a WiFi or cellular device can take advantage of that database to work out roughly where they are, without GPS of their own – and without paying their cell phone company another fee.

They have been around for a long time (I wrote about them here two years ago.) There aren’t enough devices on the market that can run their software, the problem that kills most mobile startups. If they don’t have enough users in your neighborhood with true GPS-enabled devices, you are out of luck.

Still, this is one more example of what third-party developers can do when they have the freedom to write software for a powerful device.